Exploring maps and data for all known US mariculture farms

Overview

There are 23 states with marine coasts.

There is comprehensive downloadable data for 5 states:

  • Maine, Alaska, New Hampshire, New York(?), Connecticut(?)

There are publicly available map viewers (leases or farm locations) which seem to be comprehensive, but are NOT downloadable for 4 states:

  • Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Rhode Island

There is general info on lease holders, what they farm, and what municipality or city they are in for 7 states:

  • California: general areas with acreage for commercial farms
  • Oregon: map of places were commercial harvest/growing is allowed
  • Maryland: Have INDIVIDUAL pdf maps of all lease applications and if they were accepted or not…
  • New Jersey: Have pdf maps of all existing shellfish leases and those issued in 2020
  • Massachusetts: Have number of growers per municipality with acreage and species type; also a subset of farms are available in the NE data viewer.
  • South Carolina: Apparently have 9 oyster farms as of 2021
  • Washington: Approximate locations of commercial net pens.

Subset of farms downloadable for 1 state:

  • Florida: A map of mariculture farms which are at risk of oil spills

Couldn’t really find any information on 4 states:

  • Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi

Probably no mariculture for 2 states:

  • Delaware: Commercial harvest is illegal
  • Georgia: From what I could tell, oyster farming was illegal here as recent as 2020

Comprehensive, downloadable

Maine

  • https://www.maine.gov/dmr/aquaculture/leases/aquaculturemap.html
  • I think we will want to use both “limited purpose” and regular leases.
  • Limited purpose leases are for scientific or smaller/shorter term mariculture projects, that last up to 3 years.
  • I think this can be considered “comprehensive”.
  • Update to date as of September 2021.
  • Has species types specified.
  • Red polygons for the leases. Blue points for the limited purpose. Limited purpose has length and width measurements, so regardless we will have area for both if needed.

Alaska

New Hampshire

Connecticut

Shellfish bed managed

From the Northeast ocean council dataset:

“Connecticut – Data on Connecticut aquaculture was derived from two datasets provided by the State of Connecticut Department of Agriculture/Bureau of Aquaculture and the State of Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. One dataset contains the location of natural shellfish beds. Natural beds managed by the state, town or used for recreational harvesting were selected from this dataset, resulting in 1855 polygons. The number of beds in use at any given time is subject to change. The second dataset contains 46 polygons representing the approximate geographical location of permitted “Certificate for Aquaculture Operation” gear sites in the Connecticut coastal waters of Long Island Sound via the State of Connecticut Application for Joint Programmatic General Permit for Aquaculture Department of the Army General Permit. These datasets are up to date as of January 15, 2016. For more information on CT Aquaculture and Shellfish, see the CT Aquaculture Mapping Atlas.”

Another map combined with NY, this is what we need (seaweed and shellfish): https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f8799cefbb4c4751a209710d14b9ad46

New York

Maps with no download

Alabama

North Carolina

Shellfish

Has lease info for the entire state

Virginia

Shellfish

General lease info, areas, etc

California

Maryland

Shellfish

New Jersey

https://www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/anr/sea/

  • “Currently, the program licenses more than 100 finfish, shellfish and aquatic plant producers in the state.”

https://www.nj.gov/dep/fgw/pdf/marine/shellfish_leasing_policy_atlantic.pdf

Massachusetts

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/aquaculture - “Massachusetts has 378 shellfish leases. Shellfish farms are a source of healthy protein and can contribute to healthy marine ecosystems by cleaning the water column, providing habitat for other sea life, and helping protect shorelines from storm surges and sea level rise. - Sean Bowen:

https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-dmf-annual-report/download - 386 “private shellfish propogation” permits in 2020

- Also has production data per town or region.

Washington

Approved growing areas map

“DNR leases deep water sites for finfish net pens and floating shellfish rafts and longlines. Salmon aquaculture operations have existed in Washington since the 1970s and are scattered throughout Puget Sound. Current net pen leases include salmon aquaculture, delayed-release salmon, and herring. The use of floating shellfish culture began in 1975 with mussel raft culture in Penn Cove. Current floating shellfish culture on rafts or longlines include oysters, mussels, and scallops.”

Locations of commercial marine net pens - https://ecology.wa.gov/Water-Shorelines/Shoreline-coastal-management/Aquaculture/Net-pens

Subset available

US Northeast dataset

Source: Northeast Regional Ocean Council, 2018. Northeast ocean data: aquaculture. [Accessed January 17, 2020] https://www.northeastoceandata.org/data-download/

“This dataset should be considered a work in progress”

States:

  • NY
  • CT
  • ME
  • NH
  • MA
  • Federal waters

Species: - “Shellfish” “Multi-trophic or other” “Seaweed” “Finfish”

This data set is not “comprehensive” but provides good sources to look through for individual states (see below). These are polygons.

Florida

“ESI Human Use and Socio-Economc Resources Points” data

  • https://geodata.myfwc.com/datasets/myfwc::esi-human-use-and-socio-economic-resources-points-florida/about
  • 2015 data
  • 64 sites
  • Point data, no area
  • Not comprehensive (?), only represents points which are at risk from oil spills (which could be relevant to our project).

Other than the above, I can’t find much info for Florida. Google maps shows a couple shrimp farms.

All states

Not much info

Mississippi

  • Can’t much info on Mississippi mariculture..

Louisana

  • Pretty much all freshwater from what I can tell.

Texas

http://www.texasaquaculture.org/TxShrimpFms.html - They have 9 Texas locations listed here. One is definitely freshwater prawns. Unclear if they are land-based or not (I guess all shrimp farms are techincally land-based since they are ponds). Need to explore these more. - These are current as of 2018.

Hawaii

https://hdoa.hawaii.gov/ai/aquaculture-and-livestock-support-services-branch/aquaculture-in-hawaii/

  • Not much info. There is definitely both offshore aquaculture and shrimp aquaculture in Hawaii.

No mariculture?

Delaware

“Delaware is the only coastal state with no commercial shellfish aquaculture; a multimillion dollar business in our neighboring states up and down the East Coast.”

  • Don’t have to worry about Delaware.

Georgia

Species/production breakdown for US

Take a look at the species in the US that FAO reports

fao_data_all <- read_csv("../../data/fao_aquaculture_clean.csv")

fao_data_us <- fao_data_all %>%
  filter(iso3c == "USA")


fao_data_us_group <- fao_data_us %>%
  filter(year == 2018)

marine <- fao_data_us_group %>%
  filter(environment == "Marine") %>%
  filter(!is.na(value))

# unique(marine$species)

# 16 marine spp
#  [1] "Atlantic salmon"             "Blue mussel"                 "Northern quahog(=Hard clam)"
#  [4] "Sand gaper"                  "American cupped oyster"      "Red drum"                   
#  [7] "Whiteleg shrimp"             "Longfin yellowtail"          "Abalones nei"               
# [10] "Butter clam"                 "Cupped oysters nei"          "Japanese carpet shell"      
# [13] "Marine fishes nei"           "Pacific cupped oyster"       "Pacific geoduck"            
# [16] "Pacific littleneck clam"   

## there were 4 species with NA production (so actually 20 marine species total)
marine_na <- fao_data_us_group %>%
  filter(environment == "Marine") %>%
  filter(is.na(value))
#unique(marine_na$species)
# [1] "Cockles nei"          "European flat oyster" "Olympia oyster"       "Pacific horse clam"  

# sum(marine$value, na.rm = TRUE) 

# 203687 total tonnes for marine.. does this seem correct?

FAO reports 16 different marine species of production in 2018. Additionally, there were 4 species that were previously harvested but had no harvest for 2018. FAO reports a total of 203687 live weight tonnes for 2018.

NOAA Fisheries of the United States 2019 Report: https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2021-05/FUS2019-FINAL-webready-2.3.pdf?null=

  • NOAA report 44094 metric tonnes of marine aquaculture production for 2018… versus 203687 from FAO. I think this has to do with NOAA reporting meat weight and FAO reporting live weight (includes shells)
  • NOAA also reports that the Gulf region produces th e most marine aquaculture by volume.. which seems problematic for us considering we have very poor farm level data for the Gulf states.

gulf

2018 Census of Aquaculture: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/Online_Resources/Aquaculture/Aqua.pdf

  • Table 1 shows aquaculture farms per state, but it is not split between marine and freshwater from what I can tell. Also split by species group (mollusk, crustaceans, etc.)

  • Table 10 shows saltwater acres and number of farms used for aquaculture production. However, there are landlocked states, so we don’t know if it is actually marine or on-land saltwater aquaculture. It does seem reasonable that this would be pretty close to the actual number of farms..

  • Table 11 shows sources of water, with “Saltwater” included. This is just where the water comes from.

  • Table 12 mollusks off bottom seems reasonable to think most of these will be in marine environments. Almost all of the states listed are coastal states.

  • It seems like “Mollusks off bottom”, “Mollusks on bottom”, “Sea vegetables” are the only ones that I am 80% sure are marine farms…

  • They also have data at the county level. I know this wouldn’t be perfect, but we could filter for coastal counties.